


like a house falling into the sea

by sariagray



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, M/M, Not a Love Story, One-Sided Relationship, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sariagray/pseuds/sariagray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock comes back with a confession; John has one of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a house falling into the sea

**Author's Note:**

> Thinking about Season 3 and this popped into my head. I haven't written in a while! Sheesh.
> 
> Anyway.
> 
> Title comes from Radiohead's 'Where I End and You Begin.' 
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely [analineblue](http://archiveofourown.org/users/analineblue/pseuds/analineblue).

“I did, you know.”

 

The flat is cold, and the kitchen is a bit of a tip; yesterday’s dishes are still stacked in the sink, soaking beneath a sheen of slick grease, and the post is scattered across the tabletop from the morning’s search for the electricity bill. Mary’s scarf and gloves are on top of the counter next to an open bag of crisps.

 

This is what John catalogues as he glances around the room. This is all that John catalogues.

 

There is a ghost sitting in front of John, blue-pale and bruised with lank hair and tired eyes, his hands fisted against the envelopes and newsprint. Those hands are red with cold and dry, stiff in their movements.

 

There is also a man sitting in front of John, cleaned up and well-dressed, though his eyes are still underscored with a purplish grey. The ghost is from a week ago, the man is here now – and there is yet another still behind them: a shadow that glows bright and blurs around the edges.

 

( _‘When did you last eat?’ ‘When did you last eat?’ ‘When did you last eat?’_ Some things never change.)

 

John places a mug of tea in front of Sherlock. His hand is steady for the first time in days. He sits down and stares for a moment at his own mug, giving Sherlock a moment to drink. John licks at his lip, and then clears his throat.

 

“Love you, I mean. I – well, I still do. Sometimes, I think I’ll never stop. But I can’t. I can’t love you.”

 

It had been a bit of a shock.

 

It would’ve been more of a shock, but for the blow that had preceded it.

 

(There is dust in the corners of the kitchen that need to be swept up. The stovetop could use a bit of a wipe down. The refrigerator needs tidying.)

 

( _‘I realized something when I was away, John,’_ as though the man had just been on a weekend holiday up north. _‘I think I could be – I think we could be – I think, maybe, perhaps –.’_ So John had told him to leave, and then proceeded to spend the better part of the evening staring at a glass of water.)

 

And now Sherlock was back again, sitting beneath the harsh fluorescent light that flickered and hummed. The light made him seem ghost and man and shadow all at once. Just that terrible light, and nothing else. The shadow would have cajoled John into capitulation, the ghost would have demanded an answer, but the man is only silent and unreachable. Still, a trick of the light.

 

“Because of Mary,” Sherlock says.

 

Sherlock’s eyes should be flickering to every visible surface, should be deducing John’s every habit, but they stay downcast and eerily unobservant. His voice, too, levels out with resignation.

 

John almost wants to laugh. Instead, he sips at his tea – he’s made it too sweet again, but he’d been distracted. So be it – he is committed to it now. Everything is so off-kilter that too-sweet tea is almost the most correct thing about the past week.

 

And there is a part of him, somewhere deep and primal, that wants to retract everything he’s said so far – that wants to grab hold of this man (and the ghost, and the shadow) and run wild into the night without looking back even once – that wants to take his hand, or kiss his mouth, or make heedless promises until dawn.

 

But that part of him never really got to see the light of day – it was a stillborn thing, painful and contorted and quickly buried without a name; it was acknowledged, mourned, and then suppressed.

 

Mary had come along soon after, when the flowers at its grave had begun to wilt.

  
(And the flowers at Sherlock’s grave had wilted, too, and gone brown around the edges. John had never bothered to replace them, so busy with forgetting the love he’d only just realized he had.)

 

“No,” he answers quickly, and scrubs a mug-warmed hand over his face. “Well. Yes and no. But really, it’s because I don’t know who you are anymore.”

 

Sherlock finally looks up at that, his eyes brighter than they should be – as though he has just found an intellectual foothold that will save him from falling. John wants so badly to save him from falling.

 

(And falling. And falling.)

 

“I haven’t changed,” Sherlock says.

 

(John catalogues in his head: His face is more lined. His hair is shorter. He smiles broken glass and laughs a hollow echo. His eyes are drugged placidity, his voice is cotton-soft and even.)

 

And yet, the ghost and the man and the shadow all seem to pull John in as one unified vortex; that John still wants nothing more than to sit here all night, that means something – after all of this time, after all of the death and the greys and the pain, that means something.

 

(It will tear him apart, like a black hole; he will cease to exist if he is dragged into it.)

 

He stands. The tea is, it turns out, entirely too sweet to finish. He turns his back to dump the contents into yesterday’s mucky water. In the reflection of the window, he watches.

 

The ghost looks hurt. The man nods to himself. The shadow sneers.

 

John breathes heavily and his breath fogs up the cool pane of glass.

 

“Maybe not. But everything else has.”


End file.
